Though I am an old man now, ‘The Troubles’ is still my life. Derry is where I was born, and Derry is where I will die. Derry has bled enough for a lifetime.
When my granddaughter last visited, I took her for a stroll around the city. She’s a curious thing, that girl, and already five. I suspect I shall soon come to miss the days of aimless wandering along familiar footpaths, a bright-eyed girl pointing to anything that catches her attention and asking “what’s that, Granda?”
Sometimes, that question brings me great melancholy. When she points and smiles, it is as if she occupies an entirely different world from mine, one ruled by the present, not the past. In unassuming car parks, I still see the crumpled bodies of boys shot dead. In bustling streets, I still see the crowds of people clawing at each other with stones and petrol bombs. There was a car bomb parked on a curb there; an RUC checkpoint blocked that road over there; both Loyalists and Nationalists had once bled or laid dead in the square just there. It reminds me that those days are still with me, enduring through the long years and all muddied together. Perhaps it is more apt to say that those days are me. An eye for an eye does not leave the whole world blind, it prevents us from ever closing them again.
I know I am old by how much I place my hope in the young. But when you hold a small, mittened hand in your own, the world truly seems a gentler place. They will learn from us one day—they must—but for little Áine, that day is not today.
I can only hope tomorrow will be as kind as the bright eyes that see it.
October 22, 2021
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